Kurzfassung

Risk and vulnerability assessment is an important component of an effective End-to-End Tsunami Early Warning System and therefore contributes significantly to disaster risk reduction. The knowledge about exposed elements, their susceptibility, coping and adaptation mechanisms is a precondition for the development of people-centred warning structures, local specific response and recovery policy planning.
The development of risk assessment components reflects the disaster management cycle, which cover the early warning as well as the emergency response phase. Consequently the components hazard assessment, exposure (e.g. how many people are affected?), susceptibility (e.g. are the people able to receive a warning?), coping capacity (are the people able to evacuate?) and recovery (are the people able to restore their livelihoods?) have to be addressed and quantified. Thereby the risk assessment encompasses three steps: (i) identifying the nature, location, intensity and probability of a threat (hazard assessment); (ii) determining the existence and degree of vulnerabilities and exposure to those threats; and (iii) identifying the coping capacities and resources available to address or manage threats.
The assessment methodology applied follows a people-centered approach to deliver relevant risk and vulnerability information for the purposes of early warning and disaster management. The concept, how to characterise and quantify risk and vulnerability components as hazard intensity, people and critical infrastructure exposed, their susceptibility and coping capacity, is explained. Thereby the role of remote sensing in deriving information necessary to conduct tsunami risk assessment is presented and highlighted. Additionally, dedicated results and products like risk maps, guidelines and other GIS products will be presented with a focus on the various scales addressed.
The focus of the products is on the one hand to provide relevant risk assessment products as decision support to issue a warning within the early warning and mitigation center. On the other hand the maps and GIS products shall provide relevant risk specific warning products and information to enable local decision makers to react adequately concerning their local risks.